Mirabeau - the "old man - was 42 when he died. You may like to consider recalibrating your age ranges. That said, getting to 42 will soon be quite an achievement for our leading characters and anybody else involved in French politics.
I'm really enjoying the way Mantel foregrounds the women - and not just to tell us more about the men. The exchange between Lucile and Caro is a delight - it brought to mind Cicely and Gwendolen in 'The Importance of being Earnest' - and tells us a lot about both women.
And Adele's response to being jilted by Robespierre is perfect. She's not a woman who will have a fit of the vapours and waste away - I almost expected her to be banging out 'I Will Survive' on the spinet.
The major impression I'm left with - not surprisingly - is that the French Revolution wasn't planned, it was a series of chaotic developments. At any point, it could have gone in a variety of directions. There certainly wasn't a business plan because that would have started with a vision - and I don't think any management consultant would let you get away with just 'Change things' as a vision. It's clear that there are a number of completely different agendas, so nobody should be surprised when everything falls apart.
Something I find interesting - and I don't know if this is me or some brilliant writing by Mantel - but I'm left with an impression of Louise (not a good one I might add), but Marie Antoinette seems to be a shadowy presence. And, of course, that allows you to mould her to your own thoughts and preconceptions - which is also what revolutionary Paris does.
And about the escape: surely everybody knows that royalty shouldn't travel together. (OK, it's planes really, but the principle is the same.) Surely they may have had better chances if they'd split up.
I'm trying to stick to my own advice: don't get too attached to anybody, they will more than likely end up with their head in a basket.
Yes, I think the original plan was to travel separately, but they overuled the suggestion of being separated from each other and their children. There is something touchingly human and foolish about that error. I agree about Marie Antoinette, she has this ghostly presence and people projects all their fears and fantasies onto her. Mantel writes very well about MA elsewhere in her essays.
And yes, well done Mirabeau, living to such a ripe old age, and for keeping your head. The % of characters in the book who won't is alarmingly high.
Yes, I understand the instinct of staying together, specially of not getting separated from your children… Maybe they should have tried to disguise? I feel for them as a family, independently of my antipathy towards what they represented…
"I'm trying to stick to my own advice: don't get too attached to anybody, they will more than likely end up with their head in a basket." This! I think this is Mantel's gift, to write so intimately and compellingly about profoundly flawed characters. Why am I crying when Cromwell dies?
Absolutely. It would be easy to make us care for the "good guys", but Mantel makes us care for Danton, Camille and Cromwell – so much so, it feels like losing a limb.
I cannot but agree - already weeping for Camille and Lucile, so young, passionate and ready to make history in their life time. The way Mantel describes them, and the private moments of their young marriage already in trouble, is so different from most other books - the feeling and emotion just hang in the air through the pages. Makes you think of Cromwell and Anselma or Cromwell and Liz.
Every once in a while a little moment in this book will just break my heart. This week it was when the Dauphin became scared when the carriage was surrounded and violence broke out, and he started to cry.
And in a little aside, which expresses the feelings of the people surrounding the carriage, Mantel writes, “Last year, or the year before, it might have aroused some compunction. But if they didn’t want to subject the child to the ordeal, they should have taken him back to the palace.”
This cold-blooded, self-righteous cruelty in the face of a suffering child is sadly something I am seeing more and more in my own country these days, where some people are exulting in the misery of undocumented immigrants, including little children, because “they broke the law and are getting what they deserve.” People can be especially dangerous when they are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that their cause is righteous.
A tangent, which I hope is relevant. Jimmy Carter was once asked if he thought God was on his side. He said that he could only humbly hope that he had lived his life in such a way that he was on God’s side.
Not for the first time at Footnotes & Tangents, I am delighted to find that Simon has marked the same lines as I have. This week it’s << Camille, a few feet away, looked like a gypsy who had mislaid his violin and had been searching for it in a hedgerow; he frustrated daily the best efforts of an expensive tailor, wearing his clothes as a subtle comment on the collapsing social order.>> This is so witty, and clever, and relevant; so very Mantel.
At the same time, reading less brilliant examples of her prose (but still all so very good), I am beginning to think that there is a limit to the merits of seeing the French Revolution as pure farce. Is this going to proceed in this same tone, relentless to the bitter end? I do not doubt that Mantel can do it—she can do anything—but is it a good idea? Or will she let up a little, and allow for a bit more humanity to show?
I was surprised at my reaction this week: as though I suddenly thought “That’s enough!” For now, however, I shall trust our Hilary. Things are going to get so grim, surely pity will have its moment.
I love that quote! Such a wonderful, funny, unnerving image.
It's really interesting what you say about revolution as farce, because I don't read Mantel's writing up to this point as reducing everything to the farsical. There seems to be much more here, including a lot of humanity. I get this most from Camille and Lucile, who channel all kinds of dark, powerful and often erotic energies about change, transformation and flirting with self-destruction. Robespierre certainly doesn't feel he's participating in a farce!
I highlighted that line, too, it made me laugh! 😂Also when somebody (Danton?) asks him if he was born with the gesture of flicking his hair back, or if he learnt it from a prostitute! 😂😂😂
I don’t think Robespierre or anyone else (apart from Camille at times) are playing it *themselves* as farce, but that, unbeknownst to them, Mantel has put them in a farce. But I will persevere, in good faith, and in hope of seeing a kindlier light soon…
No, that is true. But I do think the kindlier light is already in evidence, if you look for it. I never get the sense that Mantel is mocking our revolutionaries, and she seems to me to be generously entering into their worldview in evoking their excitement and fear.
My impression is that all of these people were just in over their heads and had absolutely no idea what they were doing. In a way, they‘re hardly to blame, because overthrowing the Ancient Régime was without precedent while at the same time everyone‘s minds were filled with all these lofty ideas.
It‘s one of the best things about this novel that everyone just goes about their lives changing linen shifts, having sex, indulging in gossip, jostling for precedence, being catty to each other, choosing wallpaper, obsessing over cravats while more or less unwittingly shifting history in a rather monumental way.
Two reactions to this week's reading for me that I wanted to share.
The first echoes what others have already noted: the remarkable conversation between first Camille and his family that then transitions into the scolding from Robespierre. Such rich characterization! My favorite: "You have to make decisions about the most baffling things—like whether to have the ceilings painted. I always supposed the paint just grew on them, didn't you?" Yes, this is quite comedic—but also mirrors, in a way, the things we take for granted, particularly the things above us, like absolute monarchies, for instance.. add in Max's observation that Camille "quite likes being pushed around," and this was a really impactful scene in developing our characters, I think.
The second is more of a broader observation from the third of our triumvirate in the following chapter. Danton: "But how could he have have known, he asked himself, that people would be so ready to take orders?" There are moments where this book broadens its lens on society and human nature, and I feel like this is most definitely one of them, and hauntingly so...
Once again, I’m loving Mantel’s multiple levels of humor amid the dread. The breakfast scene with Camille and the Duplessis family is humor with sharp edges: Lucile gaily thinks married status removes any requirement to do what others tell her to do (be careful, Lucile, Simon’s post warns us that the guillotine awaits women who think too much about liberty); Camille, who ignores all kinds of boundaries, admits happily that he is “quite often afraid of people,” especially Fabre, who bangs his head against the wall when Camille stutters; and dour Claude leaves the room laughing at the thought of Camille suing someone for libel. And then there’s the scene where two characters (soon to be major characters, Simon hints) put their hands to the sides of their mouths and share witticisms with us: Mme. Roland leaves the Riding School with Pétion and Brissot and Mantel’s snarky and risqué thought-bubbles for the two men had me chortling (“You’d be penetrating if you could, Brissot thought.”). Throughout, as a writer, Mantel gives us a continuing undercurrent of humor that takes so many different forms and never feels forced.
Danton took a huge tumble in my estimation this week. I'd thought him perhaps the most appealing of our three main characters, and then that gossip about Robespierre - presumably a bit of jockeying for position? "He had it on good authority, he told everyone, that Deputy Robespierre was sexually impotent. He told his cronies at City Hall, and a few score deputies of his acquaintance; he told the actresses backstage at the Théâtre Montansier, and almost the entire membership of the Cordeliers Club." Ugh. I never thought Robespierre would be the one I'd have sympathy with when we started this book. As you say, it's testament to HM's writing that she can persuade us that such on-the-face-of-it terrible humans are deserving of our sympathy, or at least a bit of reassessment.
Danton has an unpleasant misogynistic streak entirely in keeping with his character, with a macho ego that goes with it. He's full of flaws. Max's flaw is that he's spent his life trying to eliminate all his.
Ha, and for a while we can all hold Robespierre in the highest esteem. Until that goes really very pear-shaped. I can just see myself championing the disreputable Camille for a while (but only for a little while) at some point.
I have noticed that the Marquis de Condorcet does not make an appearance (or maybe he will, later), perhaps the only unproblematic fave between 1789 and whatever year he ascended the scaffold in.
If the YA novel about the revolution I grew up on is anything to go by (he recognizes the protagonist‘s talent as an embroiderer and gives her a colourful skein of embroidering thread as a foundation for her budding small business), he was a really rather good guy. I have a soft spot for him!
I loved the whole section of Adele being completely fine with Robespierre calling off the engagement that was never actually called. I particularly loved this perfect ending: "She looked at him fondly. ‘You’re a self-centred little bastard, aren’t you, Camille?’" And scene. Bwahahaha!!!!!
Simon, I‘ve been mulling this over all week, but I‘ve made up my mind that I believe it‘s not quite right to bring Saartje Baartman into the story of the fake „savages“ in the Palais Royal, especially not with an image depicting her naked and as an object of curiosity, even if the fun is clearly directed at the voyeuristic Parisians gaping at her.
Like probably everyone else, I went madly googling last week as soon as I read that passage. I apologise for not keeping notes and not providing the requisite links, but the gist of what I found out (some of it in French) was that the couple were in fact French and just pretending to be people from far away as a cover for what was really a full-blown sex performance. It appears that the Palais Royal was a proper den of iniquity, its odd legal status making it possible for people to set up all kinds of unsavoury shops there. I was shocked! SHOCKED! to learn that the elegant garden - where I once had a very learned and pleasant conversation with my then 15-year-old son about why Shakespeare is still so much fun - was witness to such debauchery.
Yes, human zoos and pseudo-scientific exploitation of indigenous people from all over the world were a thing from the early modern age on, but it looks as if these two enterprising professional boinkers just believed they could earn more money by pretending.
Saartje Baartman had nothing to do with the French Revolution and lived such a pitiful life that I think her involuntary exhibition as a curiosity should not be perpetuated.
I think the footnote still stands as an interesting tangent regardless. But would love to know more about this specific case we think Mantel is referencing...
Oh believe me, there are far worse images out there! I chose this one as being the least gratuitous while still illustrating the context of exploitation.
Thanks for the links, I'll append when I get a chance.
One of the great ironies of writing these posts is that I don't get nearly as much time to research them as I would if I was just reading for pleasure!
Goodness gracious me, won‘t someone buy me some pearls to clutch? 15 performances a day!
La liberté des théâtres avoit fait éclorre au Palais-royal un spectacle d’un nouveau genre. Entrez, Messieurs, vous verrez le grand ballet des sauvages, c’est ainsi que l’annonçoit un crieur placé à la porte. Les billets étoient de 6 et 3 livres. On voyait un prétendu sauvage et sa femme, tous deux nus, qui, en présence des spectateurs, se livroient aux mystères les plus secrets de la nature. On ne commençoit que lorsqu’il y avoit quatre personnes, et les sauvages donnoient jusqu’à quinze représentations par jour. Ils ont été arrêtés et conduits chez le juge de paix, où, après avoir essayé en vain de parler un langage inintelligible, ils ont fini par avouer qu’ils étoient l’un forgeron du faubourg Saint-Germain, et l’autre une femme publique de la rue des Orties.
Translation:
The freedom of the theatres had brought to the Palais-royal a spectacle of a new kind. Come in, gentlemen, and you will see the great ballet of the savages, as announced by a crier at the door. Tickets were 6 and 3 pounds. We saw a so-called savage and his wife, both naked, who, in the presence of the spectators, indulged in the most secret mysteries of nature. The show did not begin until four people were present, and the savages gave up to fifteen performances a day. They were arrested and taken to the justice of the peace, where, after trying in vain to speak in unintelligible language, they finally confessed that one was a blacksmith from the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the other a prostitute from the rue des Orties.
This source is even more pearl-clutchy and unintentionally hilarious because the person copying it did not bother to replace the „long“ s with modern typographic s and had it all transcribed as f. :
détails :
« Le regne de la liberté n’a pas rétabli celui des mœurs, fi l’on en juge par les outrages qu’on leur fait. Il y a eu, pendant plufieurs jours, au palais-royal, un fpectacle annoncé par un crieur placé à la porte, avec ces mots : « Qui veut voir le grand homme fauvage ? Entrez, Meffieurs, entrez : grand ballet des fauvages. Les curieux payoient fix francs, & ce prix extraordinaire pour un pareil fpectacle en attiroit plufieurs. Que voyoit-on ? Un prétendu fauvage nu & une fauvage auffi peu vêtue, fe livrant, en préfence des fpectateurs, à des excès qu’on peut à peine indiquer. On ne commençoit que quand il y avoit quatre perfonnes, & on dit qu’il y avoit quelquefois jufqu’à dix-neuf repréfentations par jour. On a enfin détruit cet horrible fpectacle, & condamné celui qui avoit loué un appartement pour ne recevoir les acteurs, à 9 ans de prifon. Le fauvage étoit un forgeron robufle, & fa compagne une fille publique. »
DeepL bravely forges on despite the erroneous „f“s, leaving a few in:
details:
"The reign of liberty has not restored morals, judging by the outrages done to them. For several days, at the Palais-Royal, a show was announced by a crier at the door, with these words: "Who wants to see the great man? Entrez, Meffieurs, entrez: grand ballet des fauvages. Curious onlookers were charged francs, and this extraordinary price for such a show attracted many. What did we see? A supposedly naked fauvage & a scantily clad fauvage, indulging in excesses that can scarcely be described, in the presence of the spectators. They only started when there were four perfumes, and it is said that there were sometimes up to nineteen repréfentations a day. This horrible show was finally destroyed, and the person who had rented an apartment to accommodate the actors was sentenced to 9 years' imprisonment. Le fauvage était un forgeron robufle, & fa compagne une fille publique."
Also from the hixstoire.net site that has an impressive collection of lascivious historical detail, though I am sorry to say that it doesn‘t source properly.
And for a more wholesome „ballet des sauvages“, please enjoy this fabulous production of Jean-Philippe Rameau‘s Les Indes Galantes with a hip-hop version of „Les Sauvages“ (as the music is named in the keyboard version): https://youtu.be/TfQJZ76WR0U?si=WpIDn4ahcu-PGRFA
Who wants to bet Camille remembers whatever he did with Caro perfectly well?
And I had to giggle at Laclos saying „As you wish, milord“ in English without knowing why. The internet could help you out, Laclos!
The conversations this week were just amazing - Caro and Lucile, Félicité de Genlis and the Duke, drunk Laclos and Danton, and the brief conversation between Gabrielle and her mother, so heartbreaking.
It‘s the tagline used by besotted Westley from The Princess Bride (which you should watch with your children, but not too soon, because both the rats and the rack are truly terrifying).
This section started well with those perfectly balanced opening quotes showing the paranoia on both sides that paved the way for the descent into violence. And although I could see what you meant about Mantel racing through the description of the massacre, for me this abruptness made it all the more chilling - the compressed description really brought home to me the horror of the violence unfolding before the festive crowd has had time to understand what's going on.
These chapters have also elicited some of my most enthusiastic margin-scribbling so far, especially for Camille's terrible fear "that happiness might be a habit, or a quality knitted into the temperament; or it might be something you learn when you're a child, a kind of language, harder than Latin or Greek, that you should have a good grasp on by the time you're seven" & his understanding that Robespierre doesn't want to marry because he fears he would love his children "more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy". I also loved Félicité's insightful warning to Philippe: "They'll swallow you up, you and your children - and everything, everybody that is close to your heart. Don't you realize that the men who can destroy one King can destroy another?"
I was also fascinated by Camille running to beg a deathbed audience with Mirabeau but then tearing him to shreds in print - this had a very believable flavour of emotionally-driven lashing out, a tidy mirror of the majority of the Compte's former detractors who now find it expedient to eulogise him. I'd love to know whether Camille's feelings here are a pure flight of fancy on Mantel’s part or whether they have any basis in fact...
Yes I don't know. I think we know that Camille wrote in support of Mirabeau in 1789, but then increasingly critically of him towards his death – not surprisingly given Mirabeau’s stance towards the monarchy. And this mirrors Camille's changing attitude to Robespierre, who he defends and flaggers in his journal, but who he will later criticise, with fatal results.
Corruption was rampant across secular and religious institutions but not a few clergy did refuse to take the Constitutional Oath, so here are 2 rabbit holes that i chose to tumble down
My highlighted passage for the week was Camille and Danton remembering something the recently deceased Mirabeau used to say-“we live at a time of great events and little men”. That feels right on the nose to these times for me, in the US.
Momentous historical events in this part that affect the course of history for generations to come include the death and funeral of Mirabeau, Louis XVI and Antoinette's flight to Varennes and arrest and return to Paris, and the Champs de Mars massacre. These were big public events of enormous scale and contemporary significance. Yet Mantel chooses not to give us a painting of them as Tolstoy would. She makes fairly quick work of them in an expository way while dwelling on the imagined backstories in intimate spaces involving her characters, primarily through dialogue.
The French are not fond of Lafayette, in contrast to Americans. It is easy to see why.
It's wild to think a book where almost everyone loses their head could be this funny.
Ok! I was hoping I wasn’t the only one LOL-ing on most pages.
Mirabeau - the "old man - was 42 when he died. You may like to consider recalibrating your age ranges. That said, getting to 42 will soon be quite an achievement for our leading characters and anybody else involved in French politics.
I'm really enjoying the way Mantel foregrounds the women - and not just to tell us more about the men. The exchange between Lucile and Caro is a delight - it brought to mind Cicely and Gwendolen in 'The Importance of being Earnest' - and tells us a lot about both women.
And Adele's response to being jilted by Robespierre is perfect. She's not a woman who will have a fit of the vapours and waste away - I almost expected her to be banging out 'I Will Survive' on the spinet.
The major impression I'm left with - not surprisingly - is that the French Revolution wasn't planned, it was a series of chaotic developments. At any point, it could have gone in a variety of directions. There certainly wasn't a business plan because that would have started with a vision - and I don't think any management consultant would let you get away with just 'Change things' as a vision. It's clear that there are a number of completely different agendas, so nobody should be surprised when everything falls apart.
Something I find interesting - and I don't know if this is me or some brilliant writing by Mantel - but I'm left with an impression of Louise (not a good one I might add), but Marie Antoinette seems to be a shadowy presence. And, of course, that allows you to mould her to your own thoughts and preconceptions - which is also what revolutionary Paris does.
And about the escape: surely everybody knows that royalty shouldn't travel together. (OK, it's planes really, but the principle is the same.) Surely they may have had better chances if they'd split up.
I'm trying to stick to my own advice: don't get too attached to anybody, they will more than likely end up with their head in a basket.
Yes, I think the original plan was to travel separately, but they overuled the suggestion of being separated from each other and their children. There is something touchingly human and foolish about that error. I agree about Marie Antoinette, she has this ghostly presence and people projects all their fears and fantasies onto her. Mantel writes very well about MA elsewhere in her essays.
And yes, well done Mirabeau, living to such a ripe old age, and for keeping your head. The % of characters in the book who won't is alarmingly high.
Yes, I understand the instinct of staying together, specially of not getting separated from your children… Maybe they should have tried to disguise? I feel for them as a family, independently of my antipathy towards what they represented…
"I'm trying to stick to my own advice: don't get too attached to anybody, they will more than likely end up with their head in a basket." This! I think this is Mantel's gift, to write so intimately and compellingly about profoundly flawed characters. Why am I crying when Cromwell dies?
Absolutely. It would be easy to make us care for the "good guys", but Mantel makes us care for Danton, Camille and Cromwell – so much so, it feels like losing a limb.
I cannot but agree - already weeping for Camille and Lucile, so young, passionate and ready to make history in their life time. The way Mantel describes them, and the private moments of their young marriage already in trouble, is so different from most other books - the feeling and emotion just hang in the air through the pages. Makes you think of Cromwell and Anselma or Cromwell and Liz.
Every once in a while a little moment in this book will just break my heart. This week it was when the Dauphin became scared when the carriage was surrounded and violence broke out, and he started to cry.
And in a little aside, which expresses the feelings of the people surrounding the carriage, Mantel writes, “Last year, or the year before, it might have aroused some compunction. But if they didn’t want to subject the child to the ordeal, they should have taken him back to the palace.”
This cold-blooded, self-righteous cruelty in the face of a suffering child is sadly something I am seeing more and more in my own country these days, where some people are exulting in the misery of undocumented immigrants, including little children, because “they broke the law and are getting what they deserve.” People can be especially dangerous when they are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that their cause is righteous.
A tangent, which I hope is relevant. Jimmy Carter was once asked if he thought God was on his side. He said that he could only humbly hope that he had lived his life in such a way that he was on God’s side.
I love the Jimmy Carter quote.
Not for the first time at Footnotes & Tangents, I am delighted to find that Simon has marked the same lines as I have. This week it’s << Camille, a few feet away, looked like a gypsy who had mislaid his violin and had been searching for it in a hedgerow; he frustrated daily the best efforts of an expensive tailor, wearing his clothes as a subtle comment on the collapsing social order.>> This is so witty, and clever, and relevant; so very Mantel.
At the same time, reading less brilliant examples of her prose (but still all so very good), I am beginning to think that there is a limit to the merits of seeing the French Revolution as pure farce. Is this going to proceed in this same tone, relentless to the bitter end? I do not doubt that Mantel can do it—she can do anything—but is it a good idea? Or will she let up a little, and allow for a bit more humanity to show?
I was surprised at my reaction this week: as though I suddenly thought “That’s enough!” For now, however, I shall trust our Hilary. Things are going to get so grim, surely pity will have its moment.
I love that quote! Such a wonderful, funny, unnerving image.
It's really interesting what you say about revolution as farce, because I don't read Mantel's writing up to this point as reducing everything to the farsical. There seems to be much more here, including a lot of humanity. I get this most from Camille and Lucile, who channel all kinds of dark, powerful and often erotic energies about change, transformation and flirting with self-destruction. Robespierre certainly doesn't feel he's participating in a farce!
So yes to the farce, but so much more...
I highlighted that line, too, it made me laugh! 😂Also when somebody (Danton?) asks him if he was born with the gesture of flicking his hair back, or if he learnt it from a prostitute! 😂😂😂
I don’t think Robespierre or anyone else (apart from Camille at times) are playing it *themselves* as farce, but that, unbeknownst to them, Mantel has put them in a farce. But I will persevere, in good faith, and in hope of seeing a kindlier light soon…
No, that is true. But I do think the kindlier light is already in evidence, if you look for it. I never get the sense that Mantel is mocking our revolutionaries, and she seems to me to be generously entering into their worldview in evoking their excitement and fear.
My impression is that all of these people were just in over their heads and had absolutely no idea what they were doing. In a way, they‘re hardly to blame, because overthrowing the Ancient Régime was without precedent while at the same time everyone‘s minds were filled with all these lofty ideas.
It's also impossible to keep your mind always on lofty things all the time, unless you're Max.
It‘s one of the best things about this novel that everyone just goes about their lives changing linen shifts, having sex, indulging in gossip, jostling for precedence, being catty to each other, choosing wallpaper, obsessing over cravats while more or less unwittingly shifting history in a rather monumental way.
Two reactions to this week's reading for me that I wanted to share.
The first echoes what others have already noted: the remarkable conversation between first Camille and his family that then transitions into the scolding from Robespierre. Such rich characterization! My favorite: "You have to make decisions about the most baffling things—like whether to have the ceilings painted. I always supposed the paint just grew on them, didn't you?" Yes, this is quite comedic—but also mirrors, in a way, the things we take for granted, particularly the things above us, like absolute monarchies, for instance.. add in Max's observation that Camille "quite likes being pushed around," and this was a really impactful scene in developing our characters, I think.
The second is more of a broader observation from the third of our triumvirate in the following chapter. Danton: "But how could he have have known, he asked himself, that people would be so ready to take orders?" There are moments where this book broadens its lens on society and human nature, and I feel like this is most definitely one of them, and hauntingly so...
Once again, I’m loving Mantel’s multiple levels of humor amid the dread. The breakfast scene with Camille and the Duplessis family is humor with sharp edges: Lucile gaily thinks married status removes any requirement to do what others tell her to do (be careful, Lucile, Simon’s post warns us that the guillotine awaits women who think too much about liberty); Camille, who ignores all kinds of boundaries, admits happily that he is “quite often afraid of people,” especially Fabre, who bangs his head against the wall when Camille stutters; and dour Claude leaves the room laughing at the thought of Camille suing someone for libel. And then there’s the scene where two characters (soon to be major characters, Simon hints) put their hands to the sides of their mouths and share witticisms with us: Mme. Roland leaves the Riding School with Pétion and Brissot and Mantel’s snarky and risqué thought-bubbles for the two men had me chortling (“You’d be penetrating if you could, Brissot thought.”). Throughout, as a writer, Mantel gives us a continuing undercurrent of humor that takes so many different forms and never feels forced.
Danton took a huge tumble in my estimation this week. I'd thought him perhaps the most appealing of our three main characters, and then that gossip about Robespierre - presumably a bit of jockeying for position? "He had it on good authority, he told everyone, that Deputy Robespierre was sexually impotent. He told his cronies at City Hall, and a few score deputies of his acquaintance; he told the actresses backstage at the Théâtre Montansier, and almost the entire membership of the Cordeliers Club." Ugh. I never thought Robespierre would be the one I'd have sympathy with when we started this book. As you say, it's testament to HM's writing that she can persuade us that such on-the-face-of-it terrible humans are deserving of our sympathy, or at least a bit of reassessment.
Danton has an unpleasant misogynistic streak entirely in keeping with his character, with a macho ego that goes with it. He's full of flaws. Max's flaw is that he's spent his life trying to eliminate all his.
Ha, and for a while we can all hold Robespierre in the highest esteem. Until that goes really very pear-shaped. I can just see myself championing the disreputable Camille for a while (but only for a little while) at some point.
Haha, the Cromwell trilogy gives us one problematic fave. This book gives us three for the price of one. I love loving all of them.
I have noticed that the Marquis de Condorcet does not make an appearance (or maybe he will, later), perhaps the only unproblematic fave between 1789 and whatever year he ascended the scaffold in.
I think his name has come up once so far... not sure whether we meet him in person.
If the YA novel about the revolution I grew up on is anything to go by (he recognizes the protagonist‘s talent as an embroiderer and gives her a colourful skein of embroidering thread as a foundation for her budding small business), he was a really rather good guy. I have a soft spot for him!
I loved the whole section of Adele being completely fine with Robespierre calling off the engagement that was never actually called. I particularly loved this perfect ending: "She looked at him fondly. ‘You’re a self-centred little bastard, aren’t you, Camille?’" And scene. Bwahahaha!!!!!
Well, I have just worked out why I like Camille so much. He's Loki, and he will be played by Tom Hiddleston 😁
Simon, I‘ve been mulling this over all week, but I‘ve made up my mind that I believe it‘s not quite right to bring Saartje Baartman into the story of the fake „savages“ in the Palais Royal, especially not with an image depicting her naked and as an object of curiosity, even if the fun is clearly directed at the voyeuristic Parisians gaping at her.
Like probably everyone else, I went madly googling last week as soon as I read that passage. I apologise for not keeping notes and not providing the requisite links, but the gist of what I found out (some of it in French) was that the couple were in fact French and just pretending to be people from far away as a cover for what was really a full-blown sex performance. It appears that the Palais Royal was a proper den of iniquity, its odd legal status making it possible for people to set up all kinds of unsavoury shops there. I was shocked! SHOCKED! to learn that the elegant garden - where I once had a very learned and pleasant conversation with my then 15-year-old son about why Shakespeare is still so much fun - was witness to such debauchery.
Yes, human zoos and pseudo-scientific exploitation of indigenous people from all over the world were a thing from the early modern age on, but it looks as if these two enterprising professional boinkers just believed they could earn more money by pretending.
Saartje Baartman had nothing to do with the French Revolution and lived such a pitiful life that I think her involuntary exhibition as a curiosity should not be perpetuated.
(steps off her soapbox and slinks to dinner)
Oh interesting! Could you share links, because I didn't find this information about this couple being French. There's always more to find!
I think the footnote still stands as an interesting tangent regardless. But would love to know more about this specific case we think Mantel is referencing...
Well, yes, but would you consider taking down the picture?
I can do yes, it's never my intention to offend!
Agree with Sabine on this request.
Thanks Claudia. Image swapped out.
Thank you Simon
There‘s a long blog post with extensive footnotes in German here about the licentiousness of the Palais Royal setup: https://paris-blog.org/2020/10/01/das-palais-royal-3-revolutionarer-freiraum-und-sundenbabel-in-den-wilden-jahren-zwischen-1780-und-1830/ with lots of images that speak for themselves.
And here‘s a link with three contemporary sources describing the incident (in French, but there‘s always DeepL! AI has to be good for something):
https://hixstoire.net/debauche-revolution-scandale-exhibitionnisme-theatre-pornographique/ - under the heading La parade des sausages. Again, lots of jaw-dropping illustrations that, in their own way, also victimise the filled publiques, but not in as egregious a way as the image of Saartje Baartman.
Gosh, it is so French for someone to write a book called „Amours sous la Révolution“.
Oh believe me, there are far worse images out there! I chose this one as being the least gratuitous while still illustrating the context of exploitation.
Thanks for the links, I'll append when I get a chance.
One of the great ironies of writing these posts is that I don't get nearly as much time to research them as I would if I was just reading for pleasure!
Goodness gracious me, won‘t someone buy me some pearls to clutch? 15 performances a day!
La liberté des théâtres avoit fait éclorre au Palais-royal un spectacle d’un nouveau genre. Entrez, Messieurs, vous verrez le grand ballet des sauvages, c’est ainsi que l’annonçoit un crieur placé à la porte. Les billets étoient de 6 et 3 livres. On voyait un prétendu sauvage et sa femme, tous deux nus, qui, en présence des spectateurs, se livroient aux mystères les plus secrets de la nature. On ne commençoit que lorsqu’il y avoit quatre personnes, et les sauvages donnoient jusqu’à quinze représentations par jour. Ils ont été arrêtés et conduits chez le juge de paix, où, après avoir essayé en vain de parler un langage inintelligible, ils ont fini par avouer qu’ils étoient l’un forgeron du faubourg Saint-Germain, et l’autre une femme publique de la rue des Orties.
Translation:
The freedom of the theatres had brought to the Palais-royal a spectacle of a new kind. Come in, gentlemen, and you will see the great ballet of the savages, as announced by a crier at the door. Tickets were 6 and 3 pounds. We saw a so-called savage and his wife, both naked, who, in the presence of the spectators, indulged in the most secret mysteries of nature. The show did not begin until four people were present, and the savages gave up to fifteen performances a day. They were arrested and taken to the justice of the peace, where, after trying in vain to speak in unintelligible language, they finally confessed that one was a blacksmith from the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the other a prostitute from the rue des Orties.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Fascinating!
This source is even more pearl-clutchy and unintentionally hilarious because the person copying it did not bother to replace the „long“ s with modern typographic s and had it all transcribed as f. :
détails :
« Le regne de la liberté n’a pas rétabli celui des mœurs, fi l’on en juge par les outrages qu’on leur fait. Il y a eu, pendant plufieurs jours, au palais-royal, un fpectacle annoncé par un crieur placé à la porte, avec ces mots : « Qui veut voir le grand homme fauvage ? Entrez, Meffieurs, entrez : grand ballet des fauvages. Les curieux payoient fix francs, & ce prix extraordinaire pour un pareil fpectacle en attiroit plufieurs. Que voyoit-on ? Un prétendu fauvage nu & une fauvage auffi peu vêtue, fe livrant, en préfence des fpectateurs, à des excès qu’on peut à peine indiquer. On ne commençoit que quand il y avoit quatre perfonnes, & on dit qu’il y avoit quelquefois jufqu’à dix-neuf repréfentations par jour. On a enfin détruit cet horrible fpectacle, & condamné celui qui avoit loué un appartement pour ne recevoir les acteurs, à 9 ans de prifon. Le fauvage étoit un forgeron robufle, & fa compagne une fille publique. »
DeepL bravely forges on despite the erroneous „f“s, leaving a few in:
details:
"The reign of liberty has not restored morals, judging by the outrages done to them. For several days, at the Palais-Royal, a show was announced by a crier at the door, with these words: "Who wants to see the great man? Entrez, Meffieurs, entrez: grand ballet des fauvages. Curious onlookers were charged francs, and this extraordinary price for such a show attracted many. What did we see? A supposedly naked fauvage & a scantily clad fauvage, indulging in excesses that can scarcely be described, in the presence of the spectators. They only started when there were four perfumes, and it is said that there were sometimes up to nineteen repréfentations a day. This horrible show was finally destroyed, and the person who had rented an apartment to accommodate the actors was sentenced to 9 years' imprisonment. Le fauvage était un forgeron robufle, & fa compagne une fille publique."
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Also from the hixstoire.net site that has an impressive collection of lascivious historical detail, though I am sorry to say that it doesn‘t source properly.
And for a more wholesome „ballet des sauvages“, please enjoy this fabulous production of Jean-Philippe Rameau‘s Les Indes Galantes with a hip-hop version of „Les Sauvages“ (as the music is named in the keyboard version): https://youtu.be/TfQJZ76WR0U?si=WpIDn4ahcu-PGRFA
Chilling remark of the week - Max to Camille: ‘In the future, we must be careful of personal ties. We may have to break free of them.’
Who wants to bet Camille remembers whatever he did with Caro perfectly well?
And I had to giggle at Laclos saying „As you wish, milord“ in English without knowing why. The internet could help you out, Laclos!
The conversations this week were just amazing - Caro and Lucile, Félicité de Genlis and the Duke, drunk Laclos and Danton, and the brief conversation between Gabrielle and her mother, so heartbreaking.
It‘s the tagline used by besotted Westley from The Princess Bride (which you should watch with your children, but not too soon, because both the rats and the rack are truly terrifying).
Sublime. So Laclos is being ventriloquised from the future! That would be just like him.
It makes me wonder if the film was on Mantel‘s mind.
For the sake of the footnotes, Sabine, you must elaborate on that tease about milord!
Oops, sorry, I answered upthread.
This section started well with those perfectly balanced opening quotes showing the paranoia on both sides that paved the way for the descent into violence. And although I could see what you meant about Mantel racing through the description of the massacre, for me this abruptness made it all the more chilling - the compressed description really brought home to me the horror of the violence unfolding before the festive crowd has had time to understand what's going on.
These chapters have also elicited some of my most enthusiastic margin-scribbling so far, especially for Camille's terrible fear "that happiness might be a habit, or a quality knitted into the temperament; or it might be something you learn when you're a child, a kind of language, harder than Latin or Greek, that you should have a good grasp on by the time you're seven" & his understanding that Robespierre doesn't want to marry because he fears he would love his children "more than anything else in the world, more than patriotism, more than democracy". I also loved Félicité's insightful warning to Philippe: "They'll swallow you up, you and your children - and everything, everybody that is close to your heart. Don't you realize that the men who can destroy one King can destroy another?"
I was also fascinated by Camille running to beg a deathbed audience with Mirabeau but then tearing him to shreds in print - this had a very believable flavour of emotionally-driven lashing out, a tidy mirror of the majority of the Compte's former detractors who now find it expedient to eulogise him. I'd love to know whether Camille's feelings here are a pure flight of fancy on Mantel’s part or whether they have any basis in fact...
Yes I don't know. I think we know that Camille wrote in support of Mirabeau in 1789, but then increasingly critically of him towards his death – not surprisingly given Mirabeau’s stance towards the monarchy. And this mirrors Camille's changing attitude to Robespierre, who he defends and flaggers in his journal, but who he will later criticise, with fatal results.
Corruption was rampant across secular and religious institutions but not a few clergy did refuse to take the Constitutional Oath, so here are 2 rabbit holes that i chose to tumble down
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochefort_martyrs
And
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Constitution_of_the_Clergy
My highlighted passage for the week was Camille and Danton remembering something the recently deceased Mirabeau used to say-“we live at a time of great events and little men”. That feels right on the nose to these times for me, in the US.
Momentous historical events in this part that affect the course of history for generations to come include the death and funeral of Mirabeau, Louis XVI and Antoinette's flight to Varennes and arrest and return to Paris, and the Champs de Mars massacre. These were big public events of enormous scale and contemporary significance. Yet Mantel chooses not to give us a painting of them as Tolstoy would. She makes fairly quick work of them in an expository way while dwelling on the imagined backstories in intimate spaces involving her characters, primarily through dialogue.
The French are not fond of Lafayette, in contrast to Americans. It is easy to see why.